Qualcomm, GloFo are stars of 2012 chip supplier ranking

LONDON – A ranking of the top 25 worldwide semiconductor companies by sales, covering ICs optoelectronics, sensors and discrete devices, from market research firm IC Insights shows that Globalfoundries increased sales by 31 percent and Qualcomm by 30 percent. Qualcomm broke into the top five (see figure 1 below).

Foundry TSMC remained in third place but increased sales by 18 percent getting closer to Samsung and Intel, which both saw sales decline. Although both Samsung and Intel are making first steps to enter the foundry business the former was weighed down with memory sales and the latter with a focus on processors for the lackluster PC market.

In total, the top 25 semiconductor companies’ sales declined by 1 percent in 2012, two points less than the total worldwide semiconductor market decline of 3 percent.

By geography the top 25 includes 10 suppliers headquartered in the U.S., seven in Japan, three in Taiwan, three in Europe, and two in South Korea.

IC foundries are included in the top 25 semiconductor supplier ranking because IC Insights has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not as a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases semiconductor sales are double counted. With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers. Foundries and fabless companies are each clearly identified in the figure. In the April Update to The McClean Report, “marketshare” rankings of IC suppliers by product type are also presented and foundries are excluded from these rankings.
It should be noted that not all foundry sales should be excluded when attempting to create marketshare data. For example, although Samsung has a large amount of foundry sales, most of its sales are to Apple. Since Apple does not re-sell these devices, counting these foundry sales as Samsung semiconductor sales does not introduce double counting.
Overall, the list shown is provided as a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries.

Haha.. very valid question. I guess if you talk about chip sales, then you have to remove the fab revenue. But if you say " semiconductor supplier revenue" you can count both. Those analysts know how to play with words.